Ventotene Open Festival

A festival spread across the open sea

The Ventotene Open Festival (VOF) is a multidisciplinary festival that inhabits the entire island of Ventotene, in the Pontine Islands archipelago off the coast between Rome and Naples, for four days. It is not just a concert lineup, but a project of widespread art: live shows, DJ sets, dance performances, digital art installations, talks, sea-view yoga classes, and guided tours are distributed across the island's most evocative spots, all reachable on foot. The subtitle of the 2025 edition, "widespread art in the open sea," perfectly summarizes the project's spirit: to unite, resist, and recreate the future through artistic languages.

The island of the Manifesto: Ventotene and Europe

The choice of location is no coincidence. Ventotene is the island where, during the fascist confinement, Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi wrote the Ventotene Manifesto, a foundational text for the idea of a free, united, and solidary Europe. The festival presents itself as an artistic, political, and collective act that reinterprets that legacy: openness, inclusion, and community are the common threads of every edition, blending Mediterranean traditions with sonic futurism.

Artistic Direction

The artistic direction is entrusted to Andrea Cota, aka Mondocane, who works on the hybridization of musical languages and the search for new forms of community. The festival is organized by the Associazione Culturale La Pentola a Pressione with the support of the Lazio Region and the patronage of the Municipality of Ventotene, a small town in the province of Latina, as well as the Marine Protected Area of the islands of Ventotene and Santo Stefano.

The 2025 edition: from Meg to Bawrut

The third edition, held from October 2 to 5, 2025, featured over 25 performances including live acts and DJ sets, ranging from electronic to world music. On the main stage at the Parracine, with just 600 seats for a deliberately intimate experience, the lineup included:

• Meg, a historic voice of the Italian electronic scene, with the Future Nomadz project;
• Bawrut, a leading producer of the Mediterranean club sound;
• Go Dugong, Ehua, Miz Kiara, Kormorano, Bluemarina, Folktronica, Treska y Tigre, and many others;
• the "Welcome on Board" talk with music journalist Damir Ivic, Meg, and Bawrut;
• the "We Are Open" artistic residency with musicians, visual artists, and students from the NABA computer art course.

Venues and atmosphere

The festival venues form a small atlas of the island: the Mensa Art Cafè, the Saline del Porto Romano, the Archaeological Museum Gardens, the Giardini di Mezzatorre, Piazza Castello, and the Parracine, the typical stone terraces. The days alternate between sunrise yoga, guided walks through the island's history, Salento pizzica music, and electronic experimentation until late at night.

A green festival

Ventotene is a car-free and eco-sustainable island: the festival is plastic-free, attentive to energy consumption, and designed for a limited audience, in balance with the fragility of a protected territory. It is a model of a cultural event tailored to the island, among the most original in the Lazio landscape.